Chapter One.

London. February 1777

Good day. Let me introduce myself. My name is George H. DeMontford. I am the educated son of a duke with distant family connections to the Crown. My manners are impeccable, and I am a member of several notable clubs and societies in London, including the Literary Club. And yes, I am a Gentleman. I consider the splendid, sprawling metropolis of London to be my spiritual and intellectual home. I reside at No.18 Finsbury Square, cheek by jowl with the Square Mile.

I want to bestow upon you a story which, even if it were fiction, would be no less believable, and one that has affected me to my very core. A story so steeped in incredulous and inhuman detail that I fear for my sanity unless I share it with trusted and learned colleagues, perhaps specialising in empirical psychology. My experience is so extreme that I strongly suggest it be consumed as a cautionary tale, not merely for curiosity or indeed entertainment. I also would suggest that this account represents a metaphor for the rotting underbelly of inherited wealth, influence, and the human condition.

In the interests of narrative credibility, I feel I might disclose some further detail about my past, as it will go towards explaining recent events on this Wednesday, the 12th day of February 1777.

I am neither too proud nor consider it any disgrace to convey that I have been cast out from a noted family and have had my inheritance rescinded for misdemeanors ‘unbefitting my position’, and ‘beyond my father’s comprehension.’ Notably, my emotional relations and sexual congress with a member of the household staff. Pleasurable sexual activities occurred, pertaining to intercourse, during a particularly boisterous and admittedly alcoholically charged evening in the cellars at the family estate in Sussex. We were caught ‘in flagrante’, her being sixteen and all, I was barely the same age. Our rushed, physically strenuous, and excited exertions were overheard by my aunt, who was searching for a particular vintage claret, and who promptly summoned my father. But not before we had consumed each other with lust and a deposit.

Our union was such that my heart races at the erotic reminders that I dream of daily. I am confident that I shall take the beauty of her face and the image of her blazing red hair with me to my grave. With all my heart, I still adore her. But we will never again gaze like smitten kittens into each other’s eyes.

Salomi, for that was her beautiful but unusual name, was expelled from the household, with immediate effect, by my father. He is an awful bully of a man. He cast her, penniless, from the house and estate and into oblivion, certain obscurity and probable penury. I know not where she has been lost, perhaps at best a return to whatever resembles her family somewhere on the south coast. My heart is now broken for an eternity. I have not been with a woman since, such is my sense of despair, which lingers forever. For I, unrepentant to the last, was sent by my disappointed parents to boarding school, to Eton College.

That episode is but a half-decade past now, but the memory stays with me still, as sharp an image as the most crisp winter's morn. Her deep dark eyes, her complexion, her blazing red ringlet hair. These images are forever printed on my soul.

I left Eton and made my way to London, never to return to my home and parental protection, and probably further admonishment. I shall never forgive them for their misguided and inhuman cruelty, and for separating us from each other’s affection.

My income is now, such as it is, completely reliant on my writing, a skill for which I am blessed and for which I am partially thankful, I suppose, to my father's indulgence and belief in a sound education. His stubborn decision to cut me from my inheritance only made me more determined to find my own way.

My sole paid occupation is writing, and I have had various documents, articles, essays, and papers published pertaining to the social conditions prevalent in today’s capital, specifically around the East End, West End, and Covent Garden locations. I have written many a paper regarding financial houses, coffee and tea importation from the colonies, petty and organised crime, and, of course, my first love, the Theatre. This literary work is commissioned for various publications, including both the London Gazette and the London Chronicle, no less.

I digress. Now that I have your attention, where might we embark on this tragic but painfully true narrative?  Let me begin with important and relevant background ephemera, to do with a side of London that no person, even in polite society, can ignore. For it is prevalent in almost every inch of space where there resides a human soul. Prostitution. Or ‘Women of Ill-repute’ as it is euphemistically termed, even by the cursed church. Prostitution is an evil, according to them, rather hypocritically, as the profession includes the male variety of which the clergy are particularly fond, I hear.

The List, as you no doubt are aware, is a populist term for a publication known as ‘Harris's List of Covent-Garden Ladies,’ an annual digest purporting to review and catalogue ‘Ladies of Pleasure’ in London. Naturally, a man of my distinction would not normally have been privy to such a publication, except that apparently I attended the same school as the most secretive author, and, as a writer, my duty is to be familiar with all printed material. Although pseudonymously published by an ‘H. Ranger’, the publication is scribed by an old acquaintance, by the name of Samuel Derrick, a school friend, with whom I have kept in contact via another old Etonian.

Now, The List, as I shall now refer to it, is by any account a bizarre melange of reportage dissolving into racy fiction with the intent to ‘amuse and entertain the reader.’ But for many a Gentleman in town, it has a functional purpose, I suppose, beyond titillation. Speaking personally, I neither support nor condone prostitution, but in many ways, the ladies provide solace and company to many an otherwise lost soul. As an author, I am fully aware of the corrosive nature of the castigating moralisers and zealots, for whom The List represents an erosion of the very fabric of society.

Of course, King George’s London is veritably brimming with brothels and swelled by pseudonyms of prostitution, or indeed other nomenclatures such as Crafty Bawds, Common Whores, Maiden-sellers, Night Walkers, and many others who, according to this text, abided by the dictum that ‘mony and Cunny are good Commodities.’ Perhaps, an estimate of the number of ladies resorting to prostitution for a living in London exceeds eight thousand. Likely, more so. Besides, commending prostitutes as the guardians of a harmonious polis, The List suggests that the whole conduct could be legalised or ‘regulated by rules’, urging both lawmakers and magistrates to be kind to those ‘public-spirited Nymphs’. In the words of The List, ‘Do we not owe to them the peace of families, of cities, nay of kingdoms? What villainies do they not prevent? What plots, what combinations, do they not dissolve?’

The List, as I indicated, is an annual publication in the form of an erotic guide to the ‘features’ of available ladies, where we encounter hundreds of barely redacted names, services rendered, featuring euphemisms such as ‘the Maypole of Love’, street addresses and prices, biographical information, employment history, and lengthy reviews of women and their temperaments.

For instance, Miss Ph-llis of Tavistock Court is a “fine crummy plump-made dame”, specialising in the “elderly gentleman”, while Miss C-rb-tt of Bridges Street’s skin has a whiteness that ‘surpasses the new-fallen snow’ and a heart comparable only to ‘Juno Queen of Heaven’.

Others are treated far less kindly: Miss Th-m-es of Bow-Street is ‘too lusty and fat, but her limbs are exquisitely well turn’d’; the body of Mrs. Cl-l-nd of Swallow Street, who hails from Scotland, gets transformed through blazon into a highland landscape, whose ‘mountain, at the top, is not always destitute of flowers’; and Miss C-ll-ns of Oxford Street, formerly employed as a cow-keeper, has her lovemaking ridiculed with literary conceits, not to be repeated here, related to dairy farming and butter churning.

Reading Derrick’s reportage, there is particular praise and admonishment of particular ladies, and I sense the author’s interest is less sexual than textural. The prose brims with literary illusion, sometimes awkwardly, and frequently dips into the purple with detail.

Methinks you are now in possession of sufficient information for me to progress to the story, the tragedy, I am about to share with you. I will convey it as if it were occurring at this very moment. It begins with an unexpected invitation.

Chapter Two.

Yesterday I received, by hand-post from Derrick, a suggestion to meet him at the Jerusalem Tavern in Clerkenwell. He indicates in his letter that he is privy to a subject matter that will ‘stir my emotions’. No more information than that. My curiosity piqued, I have convinced myself to attend the said appointment.

The afternoon stroll from my abode occupies less than thirty minutes, despite the establishment being inside the awfully polluted clock and watch makers area of East Central London, and amid the depravity of the slums and workhouses in that area. The walk is not without obstacles, but I make do and I arrive exactly at the appointed hour.  I order a Sloe Gin and await his arrival. The tavern is typical of its type, in that the dark interior reeks of the excesses of the night before, the rumbustiousness of the clientele made clear by the black timber floor, sticky as it is with discarded fluids semi-absorbed by hay strewn around. Derrick finally arrives, late, I might add, with a copy of his publication under his arm, wrapped in sackcloth for the sake of discretion, I presume.

After the familiar greetings and predictable recollections, Derrick finally broaches the subject of his enquiry with me. While retaining his hopeless covert anonymity, he proceeds to discuss the volume that he is carrying under his arm on arrival. He is clearly engrossed in the subject of the recording and reporting of both female and, more rarely and illegally, male prostitution; his eyes shine brightly with a passion for the subject. I urge him to get to his point, as he is engaged in regaling particular stories and engagements, mistakenly thinking I am equally enthralled by his sordid hobby.

“Derrick, with all respect to you, may I urge you to proceed to the core of the reason we are sitting in this god forsaken tavern on a cold, wet Tuesday afternoon?” I mutter, so as not to garner attention from the surrounding rascals and petty thieves who had since entered the establishment.

“Of course, De Montford, I am getting to that subject presently.”

He proceeds to open the volume to a red leather bookmark. Derrick looks me directly in the eye and rotates the open publication theatrically with both hands so that it now faces me, his expression expectant and excited. I glance swiftly at the lists of names and texts, and then look back at him.

“So?” I say, and shrug disdainfully, “What am I to make of this?”

Derrick smiles benignly. “That girl, at your father’s estate, the one you had relations with, before Eton. The one you informed me of, in confidence. What was her name? Something unusual, was it not?”

I pause. “Salomi. Her name was Salomi,” I reply eventually, my eyes narrowing, betraying my alarm but also the emotional surge in my soul at the very mention of her name.

“Yes, a very unusual and memorable name,” replies Derrick, and without taking his eyes from mine, places a finger on a column approximately a third of the way from the top of the open page. I look down, and at the very point of his grubby finger is an entry that makes my heart jump as if to explode.

Chapter Three

The long walk back to Finsbury Square is under a mood of the darkest, leaden cloud. Under my arm is the very same volume, loaned to me by Derrick. Contained within it lies a paragraph that compels me to weep inside. I am distraught, dejected, and so depleted of spirit. Here it is, verbatim.

Miss George, at a Grocer's Shop, South Moulton-Street.

   Hast thou beheld a fresher, sweeter nymph,
   Such war of white and red upon her cheeks,
   What stars do spangle, Heaven, with so much beauty,
   As those two eyes become that Heav'nly face.

At the tempting luscious age of twenty one, this lovely girl presents us with a face well worth the attention of the naturalist; She is of a fine fair complexion, with the brightest of red hair, which waves in many a graceful ringlet, has good teeth, and her tell-tale dark eyes, speak indeed, the tender language of love, and beam unutterable softness; she is tall of stature; and of the most tempting en bon point; plump breasts, which in whiteness surpass the driven snow, and melt the most snowy of mankind to rapture. Her given name of Salomi I suggest to avoid, so she borrows from a gentleman, who, some little time ago, secretly possessed her in service (as he thought) entirely for a time, but finding himself discovered, and she was dispensed with about five years ago, to seek support in this grand mart of pleasure; and as she has been remarkably successful, and still remains a favourite piece for the enjoyment of her charms, and the conversational intercourse, with a temper remarkably good, for a whole night she expects five pounds five shillings.

As you can no doubt comprehend, Dear reader, my angst and anger have boiled, my heart destroyed by the very thought of my only true beau finding fortune at the service of many men, the mode of discovery of which has further tortured my soul.

By the evening, my mind has taken on a terrible mess of conflict, but having returned to my home, the sharpness of my senses has slowly returned. Utter despair is eventually replaced by an iron will, of which I admit to having little previous experience. A conviction, an intent, to right the wrongs of my father’s cruelty, his expulsion of an innocent girl, five years since. To offer my lovely Salomi a new life, beyond servitude, beyond the desperate, tawdry, and demeaning world of men’s purchased satisfaction. I intend to find my Salomi and to venerate her for the rest of my days. If she will have me.

The grey morning light steels my resolve, and I rise early to plan this day. A day I hope with all my heart is the beginning of my redemption. I bathe leisurely to ensure my genitals and recesses are as clean as a scrubbed diamond, and I don the most elegant of threads that I possess from my dressing room. I accessorise this outfit with my mohair hat, a scarf, and my best rosewood cane. My aim is not so much the look of a dandy, more a romantic fool who has lost something so very dear to him, yet has been awarded one further chance of redemption. One he must seize now, or be forever cast into gloom and self-pity.

I set off, energised, for the journey to the West End. I take a carriage to avoid the chance of assault, the stench of the city, and the deposits of both horse and human. I instruct for the southern end of Soho. It is a cold winter's evening, and a stiff breeze brings a chill to the air. I alight at Wardour Street and walk west through the crowded streets, packed with revellers, artists, and vagabonds. I cross the busy thoroughfare of Regent Street, the smell of roasting chestnuts not quite depleting the stench of dubious hygiene and horse deposit. I leave behind the squalor and degradation there for the monied sanctity of Mayfair.

By now, the dark of the evening has enveloped the city, and I enter South Moulton Street, an area for which I am unfamiliar. It appears to be largely occupied by craftspeople and trades, such as saddle-makers and wax chandlers, and there is a whiff of sewers from the River Tyburn, now mostly covered over. The buildings are all familiar and similar, of brick and window in the classical style so popular now, but I am searching earnestly for the Grocer’s shop. In fact, this is simple to find, but the door is merely the entrance to the shop itself.

Instead, I cross the street and gaze up at the tall, dark, brick building above the shop. Some windows are lit with the light of candles, but others are pitch dark. But then I spy a large gap, the width of a small carriage, between the brick buildings leading to a tiny mews. The passage, illuminated by the flickering uncertainty of an overhead oil lamp, is not inviting. I tentatively cross the noisy, bustling road once again and venture into this alley, carefully avoiding the rotting debris scattered over the cobbles. I immediately discover a doorway leading directly into the side of the Grocer’s building. Nailed to this door is a rectangular hand-painted sign with several names. Some appear to be surnames or businesses, some are indecipherable, but one is clear as a bolt of lightning, and is the very name that brought me here. Miss George. 4th floor.

I push tentatively at the dark panelled door with my cane; it opens and offers little resistance. Before stepping up through the door, I look both ways to ensure the absence of Ne’er-do-wells about to pounce. I can hear voices, from where I know not, but I can certainly smell evidence of persons unknown. I cannot detect anyone except those passing in the street to my right. I enter. Immediately inside the door, I am confronted by a winding staircase, the polished, curling, wood bannister a loose and rickety affair.

I close the door silently behind me and look up into the gloom to the top of the building. The noise from the street diminishes. Above me are the forbidding floors of the building, a window on each landing, some intact, and some with cracked or missing glazing. I pause, regain any bravery that has not since departed, and decide to climb. Every stair creaks like a stuck pig in an abattoir as I ascend into the semi-darkness; a background stench of the river and the biting cold have followed me into the building. There are two flights up to the first landing, where there is some light, but merely a single flickering candle on the window ledge. The sound from the street is muffled, but otherwise all is silent.

I ascend further, the same creaking stairs, the air in my lungs becoming tighter as my anxiety grows, my instinct strongly suggests retreat, but my resolve remains intact. I finally reach the fourth, and last, floor. There is a single door at this level, so my choices are minimal: take flight and regret it for the rest of my days, or knock. Pinned to the door is a handwritten name.

Miss George.

Chapter Four

I pause, raise the handle of my cane, and knock thrice on the dark red door.

Every intuition I possess now insists that I turn and leave, my bothersome nerves suddenly diminishing. After what was surely an eternity, the door slowly opens barely an inch.

The eye of an angel stares back at me.

“Who are you looking for?”

The soft voice of the angel speaks to me, a transporting, emotionally collapsing sound of birdsong, of air and sunshine. Of life itself.

“Salomi,” I whisper.

There is an interminable pause, and the door opens infinitesimally farther. I can see both eyes only, dark and wide, questioning. “There’s no Salomi here, sir; you must have the wrong address. I am Miss George.”

I remove my hat. “Salomi. It is me, it is George.”

Time stands still.

“No!” she whispers. The door slams shut.

I knock on the door with my fist. “Salomi, please open the door.” I can hear deep, rapid breathing, a shocked gasping. I can sense she is leaning against the door.

“Salomi, please. Please open the door, I must see you,” I plead.

After seconds of silence, I hear weeping, a deep, distressing, shocked, sobbing. Then a whisper, “Why are you here? How did you find me? Please leave, George, you can’t see me, please go.”

“Salomi, I just want to talk with you, to see you, I want to help you, please, Salomi.”

“I don't need your help, George. Forget me, you don't know me now.”

“But I want to know you, Salomi. We had, we have, something so special, it was taken from us, we can find that again.”

“I don't want that life, George. So much has changed.”

“Please open the door, Salomi, then I will depart and you will never see me again, if that is your desire.”

There is a long pause. “George, if I open the door, will you promise to leave?”

“I promise, with all my heart. I just want to see you again.”

The door opens slowly, like a vice. The light inside is so dim, so monochromatic. But suddenly, there she is. A heavenly vision emerges. She steps forward, into the yellow light, and her eyes meet mine. We stare, our mouths open, no words. Her eyes shine, like they have always done, her face is the pale, tapering wonder as it has always been. Her hair is like a volcano of red lava. This, this is Salomi. My Salomi.

“My dearest darling,” I say. My heart is twisted within me, strangled by emotion.

“George, it is you.” Tears are glistening on her cheeks.

“May I come in?”

“Why are you here, George?”

“Please, Salomi, let me in.”

She pauses, her eyes fixed on mine. I then spy a glimpse of acceptance, and she stands slightly to one side, and I slowly enter the darkness of her space. The door closes behind us.

I stare into the deep pools of her eyes. For the first time, a smile suggests itself at the corners of her mouth. I hold out my hand, and she accepts it. I hold out my other hand, and she accepts it. I pull her to me. Her arms envelope my neck, my arms envelope her waist. She rests her head on my shoulder. I kiss her hair. She begins to shake. We stand, embrace, we both weep, uncontrollably.

“I cannot summon the words, how dear you are to me, to see you, to hold you, Salomi. I feared we were lost forever.”

Salomi looks up at me, the tears pouring like rivulets from her beautiful dark eyes. “George, we are lost, the old us, the young carefree us, it has vanished, George. Look around you, this is my life now.”

“No, this cannot be, not for you, Salomi, not for us.”

Her head bowed, she says, "This is what I've become."

Then, for the first time, I slowly gaze around her room as my eyes adjust to the gloom.

The room is almost square; my estimate is five yards by six. It features a single muslin-covered, four-pane sash window onto South Moulton Street, the low, muffled noise of which can now be detected. The furnishings are bare, functional, and devoid of any joy or colour. In the far corner is a large, low bed area; my eyes bypass this swiftly, not wanting to linger on the imaginations that spring, unwanted, into my mind. In the corner sits a chair, a desk, and a series of candles sitting forlornly on a cast-iron fireplace. A miserable, empty, coal scuttle sits by itself. At the centre of the floor are threadbare rugs of varying patterns and shades. In the other corner is a commode. A tall pile of books and papers sits near the bed, and bottles of potions and liquids sit on a small wooden platform box. A table with a large bowl for washing sits precariously in the far corner. It is a sordid place, created for the exploitation of commercial intercourse and little else, least of all a life of an angel, my Salomi.

“Oh Lord, Salomi. This place. I am beside myself with shame. It is a travesty that you have ended up here, in this profession, in this place. We must escape this tragedy. Today, now.”

“George, you do not understand. It is not a simple situation. Yes, my environment is basic, my life has no future, but my son is captive, and I must give half of my earnings to the ‘man’. But, it is a life, and it’s all I have.”

I am confused by her words. “Pardon me, Salomi. Your son, your ‘man’, do you mean a procurer, a panderer?”

“You are so naive, George.” She smiles sadly. “Of course, a procurer, or a ponce as he prefers. How else does a girl in my profession keep customers coming through that door? Walk-ups like… (she pauses with ‘you’), are rare. The ‘man’ goes to the inns and taverns to drum up business. He has contacts in the city, too. It is how it works, George. And I am good at my work.”

I am taken aback by her frankness, her clear-headedness, her certainty. But most starkly of all, her last sentence.

“Do you mean you desire to do this work, Salomi?"

“No, George, I despise it, but I have had to become excellent at it. It is my life now, my profession, and I have to make the best of it.”

A sense of relief courses through me. “Salomi, you are so beautiful, my heart has been crushed, but now it relives.”

“I never forgot you, George. I always loved you, but I never dared to dream that this day would ever come, that you would find me, rescue me.”

We kiss once again, this time consumed with a passion that transcends this time and place, and I admit, stirs my manhood from its slumber. Feeling me growing against her belly, she smiles through our kiss.

She pulls away softly, touches my lips with her forefinger, and then holds my face with her hand. With her other hand, she takes mine and places it on her breast. Her heart is beating like a bass drum through the layers of her gown. She then metamorphosed; changed in the blink of an eye, like a chameleon. Her sweet, open-faced innocence was instantly replaced by a boldness, an animalistic glint in her eyes, a grin so intoxicated with sexual intent. As a skilled actress would.

“Let me show you.”

“What do you mean?” I stumble with my words like an oaf.

“I want to show you how I can make a man feel, but for you it will be so, so special.”

I am taken aback. Suddenly, my emotions are charged by a feeling that was long since buried. A hidden lust that triggers memories of the time we spent together five years ago, the spontaneity, the intent, the sheer fecundity of our then-secret tryst.

“Salomi, I want to show you too, I want to show you how I feel about you.”

With that, her magical smile, which is like a sunshine that only Salomi possesses, finally returns from the longest slumber.

She playfully pushes me away from her with both hands on my chest. With her hands, she grabs the hem of her dark blue gown and undergarments, lifts them above her knees, and then slowly kneels before me, her eyes fixed on mine, a smile so sensual and full of intent. She expertly undoes the buttons of my fly, pulls aside the wings of my breeches, freeing my manhood from its confined space. The angry, wet, purple head of my hardness glistens in the pale candlelight, and her hand encircles my girth while the other searches for the bulging sack of my testicles.

She looks up at me with a devilish smile, revealing her beautiful white teeth, before devouring my manhood in her warm, wet mouth. The feeling is immesurably intense, my eruption is almost immediately forecast. Salomi smiles with my penis on her tongue, then it disappears, whole, inside her mouth, her nose touching the wings of my breeches. It is like an act of disappearance within the trap door on the West End stage, an incredible and trepidatious act of passion.

I then stop her, as my horses were about to bolt from the stable, and I desire to reciprocate her lust. I pull her up from her kneeling position, pick her up whole, and take her to the bed space. I tenderly lay her down on her back. I take both her smooth calves in my hands and raise her legs into the air, revealing a series of lace layers, but no coverage for her quim. I hurriedly separate the layers of lace to prepare her for my invasion. She lies back, laughing with joy and passion.

My arms encircle her soft thighs, my hands massaging her mound. I invade her space with my face. My mouth is open, I breathe out, through her lace layers and neatly trimmed nest, the heat radiating to her core. The softness of her thighs embraces my head. I nuzzle her wetness, my tongue, my nose, inhaling her lust, tasting her abandon. I pull the soaked lace layers aside, but gently, as if revealing a jewel. Cool air envelopes her, replaced by the soft searching warmth of my mouth.

My tongue creates vortexes of pleasure, lapping and searching, circling her bud, accompanied by my finger, then two. Her whole body tightens around me, twinges, shudders. Sounds spill from her open lips, uncontrolled, unscripted, unabashed. I look up. She is elsewhere, in an ecstatic somewhere. I rise slowly and meet her lips with mine; her taste translates and transfers. My arousal is pushing at her door, her folds, tracking and sliding along her lush, wet valley. She writhes and wriggles, pushing herself onto me. She is open, not pausing but wanting, needing.

I return to her privacy, I search for the spot that makes her jerk, uncontrolled spasms of sex, pinching, sucking, biting. Deliciously cruel, yet gently hard. Pinches to flare, caresses to care, peaking and pausing, the abyss avoided so that next time she teeters again, wanting to fall. Her senses blissed, her sensuality peaked. I’m here in unimaginable bliss. I touch her, all of her, my hands cupping, pulling, invading, my fingers tracing, touching, pushing.  My lips, on hers again. Gasping, here it comes, it is galloping toward us. The ache, the need, the tantalized tottering on the brink, I let her now, fall into heights, the splashing, champagne, fizzing, panting. The lightness of it all, the utterness of it all. The breathless, enveloping, ecstatic ecstasy of it all. She shouts, she screams, she convulses. My engorged pleasure now, invading the end of her journey, unrestricted, seconds are all it takes. The release. Oh, the release, a torrent of white ribbon, endless, gravity-defying, stupendously abundant.

She lies there, thighs throbbing, stretched and soaked. My nectar leaks from her, her clothing rearranged, cast aside, and slickly soaked. Her fingers drift, nonchalantly, between her thighs, between her lips, scooping the warmth of my fluid, spreading, smearing around her folds, a wanton wipe of dirty, playful, lewdness. It's everywhere, traces like shiny ceramic spray, her stomach, her breasts, even a streak on her cheek.

I watch Salomi, transfixed by her abandon, her sexual splay, her complete satisfaction. A vision of ruined, sated, gorgeousness. She is mine again.

We lie together on this fetid bed. For an eternity, I feel her energy and peace.

I kiss her once again, our conversation beginning again after a period of animalistic laughs and grunts. We lie there in each other's arms. Finally, I speak. “This ‘man’, the ponce, I must meet him,” I remark, meaning something significantly more catastrophic for him.

Salomi looks at me. “This is a person whom you do not want to meet, George. He is the reason I am here. He commands me, tells me, and instructs me. He benefits from me. He will be here soon; we must go soon. I urge you, George. I will come with you. I want to leave, of course I do, I want us to be together, but he will not want me to leave.”

"What spell does this man cast? How can he control you so?"

Salomi pauses; her voice takes on the most serious of tones. “Because he has my son, George. He is five years old. He says, unless I keep working, I will never see him again. He is a violent man; he has hit me many a time, if my earnings are low.”

I am shocked. “The man is an animal. Come with me now. Pack your possessions, come with me back to Finsbury Square. We can find this man and get your son…but wait. Five years old?” The sudden jolt of realisation is like a sudden awakening from the deepest sleep. My mind tumbles, confused, shocked. I stutter…

“Salomi, is, is he our son? It surely cannot be?” I sit up abruptly and look at the reclined Salomi. She has her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide open.

"Yes, George. Frederick is our son.” Tears well in Salomi’s eyes once again.

I am utterly aghast. Uncomprehending, as the tumbling rocks of realisation hit me. And the next insight, equally as crushingly damning, like a hammer from hell to my synapses, a sudden and insane realisation.

“Salomi. Is this ‘man’ my father?"

“Yes. George. I am truly, truly sorry. He is your father.”

Chapter Five

“Is our son captive at his estate?” My senses are finally returning.

“Yes, Freddie is prevented from leaving, chiefly by your Mother, who keeps him inside mostly, but I so, so hope I am correct in that he is content there, perhaps solitary, but in the countryside with his animals and playthings.”

Tears return to Salomi’s eyes. “He is well taken care of, little Freddie is being educated and brought up by your parents. I am allowed to see him once a month or so. It’s very organised, George. Freddie doesn't know I’m his mother; he thinks I’m a family friend.”

“Oh, Salomi, what a catastrophe, of my making.” I am weeping again now, too.

“George. It’s not your doing, it is the way things are in this age.” A type of acceptance tinged with sadness enters her voice again.

“No, I do not accept that. We will fight and we shall win,” I respond, hitting the bed with my fist. I am now astonished, cataclysmically angry, and truly despondent at this harrowing revelation. My own mother and father, colluding to kidnap my son, while forcing a sixteen-year-old woman into the depths of humanity, and worse, living off the proceeds. The evil, the depths of humanity.

I look at Salomi, sitting up now. Tears are flowing down her beautiful cheeks, onto her hands, which are clasped on her lap, her head bowed in the pain of despair.

“Salomi, what happened to you after my Father discarded you and sent me away?”

She looks up. “He banished me back to my mother in Brighton, but when she discovered I was expecting she inadvisably approached your Father for compensation. I pleaded with her to desist, but she did so, assuming it was in my interests. Of course, it didn't work; instead, he threatened to use his connections to place me in an asylum and to make an orphan of our son if I didn't do exactly what he wanted. Your father is manipulative and cruel. He paid my ailing mother a sum for her silence. After the birth, little Freddie was taken from me, the most desperate days of my life. I shall never forget that day they took him. And to protect him, I was forced to move to London by your father, for his friends to share me around at parties at their houses, and then to this arrangement. And so, here we are.” At this point, she collapses into my arms, sobbing uncontrollably.

As I hold her. I feel my blood boiling, an overwhelming sense of hatred at the manipulation and calculation of my awful parents. A deep, deep hatred, images of death bordering on the animalistic swirl in my mind.

Salomi looks up, into my angry, stormy eyes, “George, soon he will be here, to collect his earnings, to monitor my situation. As you know, he has an anger, a temper, like the deadliest bully of a bear. But more so these days, it is more acute; he seems to enjoy the pain he delivers. You should not meet him again,” She holds my arm tightly as she says this.

I contain my apoplexy, and instead I mock calmness, I say, “I have no fear of him, but for your sake, we should leave together, immediately. Pack some items, the possessions that mean the most to you. Leave the rest; we can collect them later. Quickly.”

Salomi gathers a few items of clothing, two small books, and her bible and places them inside a sheet and ties it into a knot., She picks up a locket with a lock of little Freddie's hair inside and places it around her neck.

“Come, we must leave,” I say.

I extinguish the candles in the room, and in semi-darkness we exit this hovel, this awful place, and walk onto the cold of the landing. Just as we turn to descend the stairs, we both hear the familiar creaking of treads below; someone heavy is ascending the stairs. It is too dark lower down to see who, but by peering down, I can spy an overweight man slowly climbing, his hat masking his features from above. I turn to Salomi; the look on her face tells me all I need to know about his identity. It is my father. We are trapped.

We both retreat silently into the room and push the door closed. I can see the look of terror in Salomi’s eyes despite the gloomy ambiance of light from the street. I urge her to stand behind me. My heart is beating like a thousand drums inside my ribcage. I can hear the creaking of the stairs as it grows louder as he ascends towards the fourth floor, each step a horrible creak, and by now we can hear his breathing, a rasping exhalation belying his physical condition. His weight, his bulk, grabbing handfuls of the curved handrail.

Now he is on the third floor, and he pauses. Catching his breath. Then, after an eternity, the creaking restarts, his leather boots creaking a different pitch to add the aural torture of the boards below them. He is now on the last flight, three steps from the landing and the door. I can hear his rasping breaths, his grunts, the creaks, the pained gasping. A pause. And then, the knock.

“Open up,” from the opposite side of the door comes the booming voice from an awful past, a voice so resonant with my own despair, fear, and depression. A further beat on the door, this time resounding and irritated. I summon the deepest of breaths, from the bottom of my soul, and I suddenly throw open the door with as much bluster and abruptness as I can muster.

I shout at the top of my voice. “YOU!”

His expression is of wide-eyed, open-mouthed shock, an indescribable sound bellows deep from his lungs. He staggers backward, “George!” is the only word he utters as his weight collapses the banister behind him, and as suddenly as a crack of splintering wood, he is gone. For a second, there is nothing, but then an almighty, sickening smack and crunch of a body crushing itself into the unforgiving stone below. This terrible sound echoes around the virtiginously dark space.

“Oh my Lord, George.” A stunned Salomi whispers. We embrace her uncontrolled weeping, conjoined by the sheer unexpurgated relief we both now experience, and the escape of emotion is so intense.

“Is he dead? Please say yes?” Salomi whispers.

Together we gingerly descend those awful stairs, and when we approach the first floor, we peer down to observe the carnage. A mere ten feet away lies the tortured, crushed heap of a man. His head is at a curious angle, the side of which is impossibly flat on the stone floor, the top of which is a bloodied tangle. The grey mass of his brain has appeared, nay, exploded onto the flagstone floor, glistening in the light of a single candle. One eye, wide open, features only the shocking look of realisation and utter dread. The other lies an inch away from his skull, held tentatively by a red thread. Dark liquid is now spreading like a tide across the floor. He appears to exhale his last breath, a bubble of spittle mixed with blood, a final, silent, pathetic, pop.

“The flagitious devil is dead. Good riddance.” My venom and spite astonish me, but I admit to myself, my own father, dead in a place as foul as here, is a fitting end. He deserved to die.

“Salomi, I implore you, do not view it, look away. We must depart with haste and with no return, and before any stranger enters here. We must go to Finsbury Square to rest, then, urgently to the estate as swiftly as humanly possible. We have one last wrong to make right.”

Outside, in the fresh breeze of London, I take Salomi’s hand, even in the gloom, her smile is so bright, so beautiful, her eyes sparkling with optimism for the first time in an age. Soon to become three, we begin a new chapter, leaving behind the tumult and degradation of the past forever.

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